


This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: And had his face sewn back on, Arkham Asylum, Canon-Typical Violence, Generally unpleasant, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Lest the reader be tempted to forget that Jerome has been dead, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, incarceration, psychiatric hospital, terrible people doing terrible things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-18 03:19:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13673169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: Searching for good times?  Well, just wait, and see!





	1. We Are Not Amused

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MillicentCordelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MillicentCordelia/gifts).



> The title of this story is taken from the name of an album by Public Image Ltd.. The quote in the summary is a line from Time Is On My Side, by the Rolling Stones. Jerome namedrops Sparks, Edith Piaf, and Otis Redding. Just so that no one is tempted to think that I ever did anything original.  
> For Millicent Cordelia! In celebration of Valentine's Day! Which I loathe, but I love you. Happy... Handjobs For the Reanimated Day.  
> I am not involved in the production of Gotham, and this school is not involved in the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

The worst thing about Arkham is that there’s so very little to do. When no one is screaming or crying, it’s silent, and still. It’s like the world has stopped. It makes you want to stop. It makes you feel like you already have. You feel dead. If you’re in possession of your faculties, though, you’re aware that the world is still out there; it’s out of your grasp, continuing to spin, without you. If you ever see the light of day, will you still have a place in that world- or will you have been forgotten? This is the real punishment: slowly, your existence is being scrubbed from the face of the earth.  
Jerome must like it there. Spitefully, Oswald thinks: It fits Jerome’s personality. The shell is falling apart, and inside, it’s noisy and disorderly. At night, sometimes, Jerome screams, actually screams, screams of terror, unintelligible garbage about his mother. This makes Oswald begin to think about his own mother, and it hurts. But he misses her so much. So even the pain is, sometimes, not unwelcome. But it hurts. It still hurts so much. Oswald lets the pain climb until it’s unbearable, and then says Jerome’s name. First, he hisses, then he speaks; then, when he finds that he must, in order to be heard, he yells.  
“Shut up, Jerome,” he yells, “For God’s sake, shut up. The old hag’s dead, anyway.”  
It must be then that Jerome regains his senses, because he simply croaks, “Thanks, buddy,” and all is again silent.  
Then, sometimes, Oswald lets the pain roll over into anger, as he begins thinking about Tabitha, and Barbara, and Butch- Edward- Jim- Victor- Sofia- and, well, he’s already in an insane asylum, so what’s the point in holding back? Oswald starts screaming, too, everything he’s thinking and feeling. When he exhausts himself, falls forward coughing, and then sits still, breathing heavily and trembling, Jerome’s voice: “Feels good, doesn’t it?”  
Jerome likes games, so Oswald thinks that this must also be a game. What will Jerome be, on this particular night? Is he going to be a frightened child, or a hardened killer, or a capering loon, or a would-be conqueror, or an empty shell? Most of all, Jerome is like a ghost. He’s like something out of one of those stupid stories that Charles used to tell, looking for attention, chomping at the air like a horse with his stupid mouth: a ghost is something that doesn’t know that it’s dead, or refuses to do the right thing and actually be dead. If Jerome can be said to live, it’s the life of a ghost. He should be finished, put away and resting, but he’s still doing exactly what he did when he was alive, now without thought or reason.  
“Same shit, different day,” Jerome sighs. Oswald’s about to tell him to shut up, when Jerome says, “Say, did you know that these vents slip right off?”  
“Wow. That’s really interesting. Not surprising, though,” Oswald snorts, “This place is a moldering wreck.”  
“More like a haunted house,” Jerome says. For a moment, it chills Oswald, like Jerome knows what Oswald’s been thinking. “Wanna kimono my house? Play a little cops and robbers?”  
“No, thanks.”  
“Aw… don’t be a square. I’m not diseased. At least, I don’t have anything that’s catching.”  
“That’s such an alluring offer.”  
“What if I told you that I was shipping out tomorrow?”  
“I should be so lucky,” Oswald mutters.  
“You’re no fun,” Jerome says, and he must be sulking, because Oswald doesn’t hear anything else out of him the rest of the night.  
At breakfast, though, Jerome is feeling frisky, and Oswald’s forced to perforate Jerome with a fork. The tinnes are dull, so Oswald has to lean on it. Anyone else would get the message, but Jerome stays where he is, his hand on Oswald’s knee, and after a while, begins pressing his dead weight down on the fork, even as he yelps in pain. Luckily, the guards find Jerome annoying, so it’s he, not Oswald, who gets taken away. When Oswald glances at Jerome’s hand, the marks left by the fork look like an animal bite. By night, Jerome hasn’t returned, and Oswald looks forward to sleeping peacefully. Yet, when the lights go out, Oswald finds himself lying awake, listening for a familiar sound. In the distance, someone screams. It goes on for a long time. Screaming that long is its own punishment. How could someone do that to themself, and wouldn’t they just… run out of air? Oswald’s heard plenty of people scream themselves hoarse, but that always came to an end. This goes on and on. There must be a lot of pain. Worse, though, than physical pain, the pain of death? It can’t be. As Oswald falls asleep, he thinks fleetingly, Maybe it’s a ghost.  
Then, Jerome is back.  
Well, nothing lasts forever.  
“Not your type, huh?” Jerome asks.  
“Not even remotely.”  
“It’s because they had to sew my face back on, isn’t it. Tell the truth. I can take it.”  
This actually makes Oswald laugh, to spite himself. He clears his throat. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you.”  
Jerome laughs, a bark like a little dog’s. “Ha! Laugh at me, please! I’m hilarious! Someone, please- laugh at me! Anyone?”  
In the distance, someone does laugh.  
“Thank you!” Jerome says. Someone claps their hands. “Bravo pour le clown,” Jerome croaks, “But seriously. Come on- you’re in a loony bin. It’s not like your dream date’s going to come strolling in.”  
It’s late, and Oswald has that peculiar feeling of emptiness- not like you used to be full, but like you never were- so he sighs, “You’d be surprised.”  
“Ooh, workplace romance. Do tell.”  
“He was, for a time, an inmate here. When I was mayor, I used my influence to have him released. He came to work for me, sat at my right hand. I trusted him, completely. I thought we understood each other. Then, some… woman just… appeared,” Oswald laughs, “She just materialized, like a dream- no rhyme or reason. I did a background check, of course, hoping to find something on her to scare her away before it came to violence, but she was exactly what she seemed to be. Just some insubstantial little something that blew in on the wind. Seemingly possessed of no reason for living other than to love Edward Nygma.” Oswald frowns. He hadn’t meant to say Edward’s name.  
“So, what did you do?”  
“I had her killed.”  
Jerome laughs. “What did your boyfriend think of that?”  
“He didn’t understand.”  
Jerome sighs, “They never do. Some people just can’t appreciate quality violence.”  
“He tried to kill me. He nearly succeeded.”  
“Ooh… are there scars? Can I see? I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.”  
“I can see all of yours.”  
“Oh, I have scars no one’s seen. Except the medical examiner, and those ghouls at Indian Hill. And Theo Galavan.”  
Oswald smiles. “You know that I killed him, don’t you?”  
“Get out of town.”  
“I did.”  
“Well, now I want to suck your dick just for that. Tell me allll about it.”  
But, of course, Oswald can’t. It’s silly, but he can’t let himself give Jim away. It’s yesterday’s news, and no one would believe Jerome if he said something, but-- It belongs to Oswald. It also belongs to Jim. It belongs to Oswald more. He let it happen. He could have taken the gun away from Jim. He could have shot Galavan before Jim got the chance. But he didn’t. It was--  
Well, it was like being outside of himself. This had already happened. Jim, and him, and the river, and a gun. This time, it might have ended differently, but the outcome was the same: Jim had shown Oswald mercy.  
So, why did Oswald still have to suffer for Jim?  
It’s a strange kind of suffering. Oswald doesn’t want to give it away, even if this means that he can give it up.  
He tells Jerome the accepted fiction about shooting Galavan himself. He tells Jerome about the umbrella, which gets him a tittering gasp. He tells Jerome about Galavan’s second death.  
“I need a cigarette,” Jerome sighs, “You wouldn’t happen to have one, would you?”  
“No.”  
“Well, smoking kills. Whatever happened to your sweetheart?”  
Oswald blinks. “Oh,” he says, “Edward. Well, he came up with a ridiculous name for himself, and tried to take over Gotham. As many others have, he failed. I had an associate of mine put him on ice. Some obsessive fan thawed him out, but he was never the same. The last I heard, he was...” Oswald feels his mouth twist, “impersonating me in some kind of clown show in the Narrows.”  
“Clown show, huh?”  
“Yes,” Oswald spits.  
“What’s his timing like?”  
“He’s an idiot.”  
“Comedy is more difficult to play than tragedy.”  
“I’m not going to talk about him anymore.”  
“Cheer up. When we get out of this place, you can blow him to kingdom come, too.”  
“I don’t want to kill him. I want him to suffer.”  
“Make him suffer, then kill him; two great tastes that taste great together.”  
“I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.”  
“All right,” Jerome sighs, “go to your nest, baby bird.”  
Oswald has nothing to say, so he rolls his eyes.  
The next morning, in the day room, Jerome starts another fight with him. It’s pure squeamishness that keeps him from hitting Jerome’s face; he punches Jerome in the ribs. Jerome doubles over, laughing, then launches a chair at him. It misses, but someone still stands up and claps. One of the legs of the chair has broken off, and Oswald uses it to hit the back of Jerome’s knee. Jerome goes down, and Oswald doesn’t have time to think about what he’s doing before he’s on top of Jerome, hitting his face, too- not even angry, but too much of something, to care that he’s touching that strange, dead skin.  
“I love it,” Jerome hoots, and Oswald hits his open mouth, splits his knuckle open on Jerome’s tooth. Jerome grabs his hand, forces the fingers open and shoves Oswald’s wounded knuckle into his mouth. First, he’s just sucking, licking. It’s viscerally distressing in a way that Oswald can’t bring himself to recognize. Instinctively, Oswald’s mind curls in on itself. If he really thinks about it, it’ll all be over. He will have flung himself out into space. He’ll be wherever the other inmates are, wherever people go when they lose their minds. He tries to wring his hand from Jerome’s grasp, but Jerome is so unnervingly strong. It must be something about being dead.  
But then.  
“Calm down,” Jerome says in that low voice, which could be warning or soothing, but doesn’t sound sufficiently human to really be anything. He looks up at Oswald, a ribbon of blood from his nostril curving down the side of his face. He runs his other hand up Oswald’s sleeve, down his wrist, sets it on Oswald’s hip. Oswald can’t move. He doesn’t even know why anymore. He feels like he’s been turned inside out; the chills on the inside of his skin now covering him like fur. Jerome brings Oswald’s knuckle, now no longer bleeding, to his mouth, and kisses.  
The sound that Oswald makes it one of horror.  
Anyone who says differently has no idea what they’re talking about.


	2. Die Laughing

When you have nothing, anything looks good. Oswald had forgotten. Largely because he’d wanted to. Who’d want to remember times like that? There will come a time when Oswald’s far enough away from this that he can forget all about it. Then, he’ll pull time over it like a sheet, as though he were making a bed. Arkham will be buried. So, finally, will Jerome. Oswald will buy Arkham. He’ll level it. He’ll have the foundation dug up, and smashed into gravel. He’ll salt the earth. He’ll turn the land into a shopping mall, into something so vapid and ordinary that no one will be able to imagine what used to happen there. The only real revenge is the privilege of forgetting. That is how you blot something, someone out of existence.  
He’s not there yet. The time and place exist, and are waiting, but Oswald hasn’t yet been delivered. That’s the worst thing. You have to wait, too. While you wait, you do all sorts of stupid things to pass the time.  
After the fight in the day room, Jerome’s put in isolation. He’s gone for two days, and the next time Oswald sees him, Jerome is walking around the day room like it were a park, one arm around Sharon, the klepto, the other around some other girl Oswald doesn’t recognize. When he passes by Oswald, he winks. Everything about this place is absurd.  
That night, Jerome talks to Oswald, tells him not for the first time about his life in the circus. They’re horrible stories, and Oswald doesn’t know if he’s supposed to feel horror, or sympathy… It’s probably something like that. You’d never tell people stories like this if you weren’t trying to elicit a specific reaction. He thinks about talking to Edward at night, at home, when everyone else was gone, and there was no one to see or hear anything. He’d told Edward about his childhood, and Edward had told Oswald about his. This is like some horrible mirror image; the picture twisted, but not enough to warp it out of recognition. If it didn’t look like something you could recognize, looking at it wouldn’t hurt. Oswald thinks about Jim, by the river, with Theo Galavan. That time, there had been no Harvey Bullock to deceive. There had been no reason to lie. Jim had shown Oswald who he really was. That was what had later made it so hard. It was so hard to believe that this wasn’t who Jim really was. That it was all just lies. You could unravel them until the end of time, and you would never find so much as a grain of truth about who Jim was.  
Jerome likes games. Jerome is a game. If there was a person in there, he died a long time ago. Jerome is like a wall or a door. He’s cold and hard, but if you’re tired, you can lean against him.  
Oswald sighs, “Take off the damn vent.”  
“Hey! I’m pouring out my heart, here!”  
“If you still feel bad about all of that nonsense, then just find the circus, and kill them all. And stop complaining, already,” Oswald mutters.  
“You should talk! All you do is cry about how the men in your life done you wrong. Maybe you just like to get hurt.”  
It’s such a cheap line. So very cheap. Oswald feels his mouth twist, his lips pressing together as though they could chew themselves up. Once, Oswald lived in a castle, and a fat, kind woman brought him breakfast every morning. Once, Oswald’s suit jackets were lined in silk. So very cheap. He lurches up as though gripped by nausea, turns in toward the vent and shouts, “You come over here, and say that!”  
Jerome laughs, his voice uncongested for once, clear and boyish, the sound grotesque coming out of his mangled mouth. Then, hoarsely: “Just give me a moment. Why don’t you slip into something more comfortable?”  
This is a stupid thing to do.  
The thought inflates and bursts like a bubble. It’s simply there, and then it isn’t.  
Then:  
“Well, look at you,” Jerome says, “Moonlight flatters you.”  
“Not you,” Oswald sneers.  
“Oh, but I’m stunning by firelight,” Jerome says, coming closer, “Like the light of a conflagration; Gotham burning to cinders all around us. Then, you’re not going to be able to get enough of me.”  
Oswald rolls his eyes. “Shut up.”  
“Try a little tenderness,” Jerome rumbles, and before Oswald can protest, Jerome kisses him.  
It feels… wrong. The skin of Jerome’s lips is like the skin of a scar; too smooth in some places, and strangely textured in others. All of his innuendo, and Jerome still kisses like a teenager on his first date. The mix of sensations is… interesting. But it’s repulsive.  
But it’s interesting.  
It’s a game. If Oswald has to do it, he’s going to do it his way. Jerome lets himself be pushed against the wall, opened up, explored. He’s grabby, but he’s unfocused. When you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s easy to do a lot of it. He pulls at Oswald’s collar, snatches at the buttons of Oswald’s shirt.  
“You act like you’ve never even seen a man before,” Oswald says.  
“Give a guy points for enthusiasm. Or are you frigid, or something?”  
“They don’t say that about men,” Oswald snaps.  
“Hmm… maybe they should. About some men.”  
Oswald slaps him.  
“That was nice,” Jerome sighs, “Do it again.”  
Oswald does, harder. Now, he lets Jerome take off his shirt. The feeling of that mouth on his body is no less strange. After a moment, the physical sensation isn’t even really that pronounced; it’s just… a matter of knowing where Jerome has been. Oswald had expected him to still be cold. To have something tangible to him of the grave. But he’s warm. His limbs are supple. His blood circulates. It even rises to those terrible cheeks. Under Oswald’s hands, his skin is hot.  
Frowning, Oswald asks, “Can you feel that?”  
Jerome’s voice is the sound of a door yawning open in the dead of night. “Yeah.”  
“Does it… hurt, or something?”  
“Sometimes,” he says hoarsely, “Sometimes, I don’t mind.”  
“Did it hurt when I hit you?”  
“Yeah.”  
“A lot?”  
“Yeah, but I didn’t mind.”  
“You’re very strange.”  
“Stranger in the night,” Jerome says, giggles and wheezes.  
Oswald rolls his eyes. “Oh, my God.” But he lets Jerome kiss him again, touch him. He’s warm, and he’s solid, and he’s willing to hold Oswald up. When you’re tired, you’ll fall against anything. On Oswald’s bed, he pulls Oswald on top of him.  
“Be gentle,” he rasps. The shadows warp his mouth even more, so that it seems to take up most of his face, like a shark’s mouth. He’s all mouth. Too much mouth. Oswald doesn’t even bother to tell him to shut up. Oswald has just realized--   
he hates games.   
He hates jokes and riddles. He hates all of the ways that people try to pass off their lies as something else. He just realized--  
he doesn’t want to play anymore.  
He gets off of Jerome, sits down next to him.  
Jerome pushes himself up on his elbows. “Couldn’t go through with it, huh? I’ll try not to take it personally.”  
“You want to destroy Gotham.”  
Jerome sits up straighter. “Now you’re talking.”  
“Fine. But we do it my way.”  
“That’s the best thing about destruction: there are so many ways to do it. What kinds of dirty little things do you want to do to this fair city?”  
“I want to knock it all down,” Oswald’s throat is tight, “I want to rebuild it in my image.”  
Jerome snorts. “Cute idea, but where’s the fun in that?”  
“There was a time when people knew how to share. Organized crime- common criminals- people like you,” he says with a frown, “have always co-existed. The problem’s greed. Greed, and rigidity. No one wants to change, no one wants to give anything up.”  
“Blah, blah. You sound like a school teacher. Tell me something good. Tell me something I want to hear.”  
Oswald looks straight ahead, as though the wall were a screen in a movie theater; as though he were alone in the dark, waiting for the show to begin. Already tasting the excitement. It’s his movie, now. “First, the GCPD must fall.”  
“There you go,” Jerome says.  
“You’ll have people to do that, I imagine.”  
“Some, but I need more.”  
“Fine,” Oswald says, his teeth grit, “but no one touches Jim Gordon.”  
“Oh, what’s the point of that?”  
“I kill him. I do whatever I want with him.”  
“Do tell.”  
“No.”  
“You’re no fun. What else?”  
“Edward Nygma. I take care of him once and for all.”  
“Are you going to cut out his cheating heart?”  
“Maybe. Tabitha Galavan, Barbara Kean, Butch Gilzean, Victor Zsasz, Sofia Falcone-- I’ll kill them all.”  
“Slowly?”  
“Obviously. You can have the circus. You can hunt them all down. Across the country, if you have to,” suddenly, Oswald feels generous, “I’ll give you whatever you need.”  
“What’ll you give me?”  
“Anything. They seized my assets, but they didn’t get everything. I have resources that even Edward didn’t know about. He thought he was so smart...” Bitterly, Oswald laughs. The pain is new. That’s so funny. How pain is always new. It never ages. It never goes away. “I’m going to cut out his tongue. I’m going to take him apart.” He’s not shaking. It’s just cold in this fucking place. It’s so cold in this haunted house.  
“You still love him.”  
“No, I don’t.”  
“It’s all right,” Jerome says. His voice is like syrup, like coagulating blood. “It’s better if you still love him. It’s always better when it’s someone you love.”  
“I’m going to feed pieces of Tabitha to Barbara. Then, I’m going to feed pieces of Barbara to Tabitha. Butch, I might just behead. I haven’t decided. Victor, Sofia... Are you familiar with drawing and quartering?”  
Jerome doesn’t pretend not to be breathing heavily.  
“And you,” Oswald continues, “You’ll be able to bathe in all the blood you spill. It’ll lap at your ankles, like the ocean. Anything you want...”   
Though, of course, Oswald understands not just the utility, but the joy of lying. If it’s someone you don’t care about, it makes you sort of like them. It makes you want to be kind to them. While there are still lies to tell them. Until the lies run out, and you leave them alone, all alone with the truth.  
Until then, though.  
He gets back on top of Jerome. Jerome’s pants are undone. He’s done most of the work, himself. He’s just lying there, still, his hand on his cock, looking up at Oswald. Oswald moves aside Jerome’s hand, gently, as though touching a sleeper. As Oswald touches him, Jerome’s eyes fall closed. Behind his eyelids, he’s dreaming, of revenge that gurgles forth like water from a fountain. Like water, his revenge flows without thought or reason. Like water, it simply is. Jerome dreams of utter destruction, because he’s young, and stupid, and broken beyond repair. Oswald, though, is none of these things. He presses his body onto Jerome’s, and closes his eyes, too. Now, Jerome could be anyone.  
People like Jerome think that destruction is freedom, but if you destroy everything, then you have nothing. Oswald almost pities him. Jerome likely will not live to learn. Freedom is being able to do whatever you want to, and you only get to do that if you have a world to do it in. Destruction is death, and death goes nowhere and does nothing.  
Jerome’s eyes are still closed when he comes, teeth slipping against his lacerated lip, for once quiet and not making a ridiculous fuss, but Oswald’s eyes are open. Pity curdling into disdain, he pulls back and watches Jerome, Jerome’s head falling to the side, his mouth falling open. It’s so much like watching the life leave someone. Suddenly, Oswald thinks that he could stand to do this again.  
Freedom is owning absolutely everything. Everyone knows that.


End file.
